Calls to 1194 is an experimental, audio/visual work for the stage,
a visceral and very personal hour of storytelling

A woman’s heart has stopped working, and she won’t last the night. Lying in the Emergency Department, she has to learn very quickly how to die, discovering along the way what it is to truly live. In this meditation on love and connectedness, she remembers life’s small miracles – light, colour, water – miracles she took for granted, much like her beating heart. These thoughts and discoveries are expanded in the live soundtrack where harmonics draw us down into our deepest self. But we are running out of time …

Based on the writer’s near-death experience, Calls to 1194 is a reminder that we are all a heartbeat away from extinction. The piece is far from grim, however. It’s a comforting guide on life, death and regeneration – for ourselves, and for a planet in crisis. 

‘With a master poet’s extraordinary breadth of language and imagination, Thibodeaux weaves through an ocean of reminiscence …’

Geoffrey Williams, Stage Whispers

‘… the masterstroke is to weave the life-threatening perils of climate change into the expectations we have that our hearts will always go on beating. That the seasons will always change as we remember them from our childhoods …

Geoffrey Williams, Stage Whispers

Calls to 1194 is an audio guide on life, death and regeneration – for ourselves, and for a planet in crisis. “[It has] so many universal observations, metaphor and allegory… It is a deeply personal story but also an Everyone’s” This work is a gift.

Gillian Harrison

Performance at Darwin Entertainment Centre – October 29, 2021
Panos Couros live streaming from Redfern, Sydney
Camera: Will Tinapple, Emily Tinapple. Operator: Danny Christie